Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- Notes on contributors -- Foreword -- Preface: a personal note of public significance -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: towards an inconclusive scheme of performative communication -- PART I Unfolding the discursive terrain -- 2 Scripting violence, performing terror: a discursive soliloquy -- 3 Performance of personal and national redefinition: combining the global and the national in Indian media and politics -- PART II Implications of performative politics -- 4 Nationalistic authorship and resistance: performative politics in post-war Northeastern Sri Lanka -- 5 Teshro lingis and dalals: gender performance and the question of foreclosure in contemporary political discourse of Nepal -- 6 Protests, resistance and violence: the collective performance of everyday images in Manipur -- 7 Civil society as a site of performed identity: exploring the Naga context -- 8 The magic called elections: polls, performance and citizenship -- PART III Myriad mediums and multiple metaphors -- 9 Depicting labour, performing labour: working women in Pranlal Patel's Jyoti Sangh series -- 10 Performative politics and the iconography of Gita Press: a critical reading -- 11 Performative implications of genres: a critical rumination -- 12 Bhojpuri folk songs as scripts of conjugal performance -- 13 Cinematic construction of other: performing Pakistan in Hindi cinema -- 14 Performing the printed: in the robe with the meanings of block printing -- PART IV Socio-cultural public sphere(s) -- 15 Performative Shahbag: debating culture and politics of youth in contemporary Bangladesh -- 16 Performing democracy: on the communicative structure of news television -- 17 Conflicting moralities of Indian nation: reasoning with Vijay Tendulkar's theatre -- Index